


A Flicker of Melted Ice

by antigrav_vector



Series: (R)BB fics - all pairings [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Cap_Ironman Tiny Reverse Bang, Cuddling, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Ice, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 16:34:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7721932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antigrav_vector/pseuds/antigrav_vector
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Life is only a flicker of melted ice.”<br/>― Dejan Stojanovic, The Sun Watches the Sun</p><p>------</p><p>Tony was going to kick Steve's ass when he finally found the noble idiot, he decided.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Flicker of Melted Ice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MusicalLuna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MusicalLuna/gifts).



> With thanks to Muccamukk for the beta. :D

Tony was going to kick Steve's ass when he finally found the noble idiot, he decided.

Well, right after he kissed him. Steve offering himself to a villain in place of a group of schoolkids was hardly an unheard of occurrence, though thankfully it hadn't happened often. Usually, though, the villains preferred to fight it out.

This time had been different. The guy, who was calling himself something outrageous that Tony had ignored in favor of dubbing him 'Parka Man', had been dressed in full winter gear despite the hot weather. And he'd taken Steve at his word. The kids had been allowed to leave the building unharmed, and then everything had gone eerily silent, including Steve's comm line. Tony, who'd been across the country for a big investors meeting, and watching via JARVIS's status reports, had all but held his breath, waiting to hear what had happened. A few minutes later he'd found out that Parka Man had managed to knock Steve out somehow, despite his metabolism and resistance to drugs. 

The end result of six hours frantic scouring of the globe with all his resources had been a weak ping from one of the two distress beacons hidden in Steve's uniform, located deep in the icy glaciers of the Antarctic.

"JARVIS," he called, heading for the armouring platform, "zip me up tight. It's gonna be cold out there."

"Do be careful, sir," the AI rejoined, "it will be difficult to get reinforcements to your position quickly where you are headed."

"That's not a bad idea. Give the team and Pepper a heads up." Tony ordered, stepping into the jetboots and letting JARVIS place the rest of the armour panels on him. He was still in his undersuit. He hadn't bothered to take it off in the time he'd been back at the Tower, too intent on locating his lover to give a flying fuck about peeling it off and showering. 

Thirty seconds later, he was blasting up into the darkening sky and five minutes later he was out in international waters. Careful to keep under the radar and out of sight, he kicked up the output of his bootjets and sent himself soaring through the air faster and faster, pushing the limits until he broke the sound barrier. Every second Steve spent there was a second too long, in his opinion, and it had already been six hours. With the way Steve hated the cold, this was not likely to end without some trauma and associated aftermath. If only because Steve had no cold-weather gear, and Tony hadn't waited for the team and the quinjet.

In retrospect, maybe he should have.

But his worry over Steve wouldn't let him.

Pushing the armour ever faster, right up to the bleeding edges of its limits, Tony hurried on. Even at his top speed of mach 3.4, getting from New York to the Antarctic would take almost five and a half hours, and that was already far too long for Tony to accept. The villain had a six hour head start on him, and probably a quick way back to his lair, and Tony just knew that the guy wouldn't pass up a chance to do whatever he pleased to Steve. Having Captain America at one's mercy tended to do some really dark things to a villain's psyche.

He couldn't do a thing from here, though, and Tony knew it.

"Sir," JARVIS piped up, a half hour into the flight, "I can maintain navigation, if you wish to get some rest."

Tony considered it. Sleeping the the armour was never comfortable, but showing up too tired to fight was also not an option. Deciding that discretion really was the better part of valor, Tony gave in. "Alright. Take the wheel. Wake me up when we're half an hour out."

Closing his eyes was easier than he'd expected, in the end. Sleep ambushed him, totally ignoring his half-hearted conviction that worry for Steve would keep him awake, and the transition from wakefulness barely registered.

When he peeled his eyes back open, the sight that met his eyes failed to compute for a long moment. There were stars -- lots of them in fact -- but they didn't resolve into any of the constellations he recognised. It wasn't until JARVIS spoke, that Tony fully registered where he was. "Sir," his AI informed him, bringing up a map on the armour's HUD, "we are about 1000 miles from the location of the beacon, over the Southern Ocean, and 500 miles from the edge of the Princess Ragnhild Coast. The position of the distress beacon has remained stable, approximately halfway between the Coast and the Plateau Station Aerodrome, and I estimate that you will arrive on site in twenty-five minutes."

Tony would have rubbed his palms together if he hadn't been flying. "Any news from the team?"

"Agents Barton and Romanov checked in with me three and a half hours ago. They will be following with a quinjet carrying rescue equipment and supplies, and will be arriving approximately three hours after you do, sir."

Tony didn't answer that verbally, choosing to query the HUD about the conditions and forecast for the area where Steve was being held. It would do them no good if Clint and Natasha got the quinjet to the Antarctic and then were forced to land elsewhere on the continent due to inclement weather. Thankfully, the forecast was for clear cold weather, albeit with strong winds. The temperatures made him _very_ glad he'd improved the temperature isolation rating of the armour and undersuit after his trip through that portal during the Chitauri Invasion.

A smattering of lights flashed by beneath him, and Tony idly identified one of the permanent research stations. He doubted anyone would even notice him, though. The quinjet, maybe. It was a bit slower and louder than the armour he wore. 

Five minutes later, JARVIS pinged the distress beacon's location on his HUD, and Tony slowed his headlong pace to a more reasonable one, eventually pulling up into a hover in the sky above the beacon's location, and waiting for JARVIS to give him a scan of the area.

There was a well-hidden set of doors under a layer of ice, and they showed up very clearly on the infrared scan JARVIS performed. Tony grinned and cut the power to his jetboots. He made a three-point landing on the ice dead in the center of those doors, which were placed parallel to the surface and about half a meter under it. Several large blocks of ice cracked into smaller ones under his weight and the impact of his body. It left him a little rattled and he knew he'd be sore later, but it was worth it for the fact that he could lift those loose ice chunks out of the way and blast a few more loose with his hand repulsors. 

It didn't take long for him to get to the metal of the doors, and pause, realising he had no idea where the mechanism was to open them. "J," he prompted, "you got anything for me?"

"It appears to be a simple RF triggered mechanism. I believe I can open it using the armour's on-board capabilities."

Almost before JARVIS had finished speaking, the doors began opening. Tony wanted to shake his head. Villainous lair on a budget. This guy had effectively built his lair and then put a standard garage door at its entrance. JARVIS stopped it before it opened entirely, and waited only long enough for Tony to slip through into the darkness beyond before he closed it.

He seemed to have managed to get in without being detected, so he took a moment to look around.

Powering up one of his hand repulsors until it glowed brightly, Tony used it as a makeshift flashlight. The area he was in _looked_ like your standard suburbian garage, too, bizarrely. It held a workbench and power tools, and just enough clutter to look lived-in. There was a heavy steel door with a keypad lock at the far end, though, and that definitely didn't belong in any garage. Tony made a bee-line for it, and eyed it for a long moment. Only the first five numeric keys showed any wear. "Any idea what's behind door number one, J?"

"On board instruments indicate a corridor ten meters long and two wide. I cannot resolve more detail at this time."

Half hoping he was wrong in his hunch, Tony keyed in the first five digits in ascending order and paused.

The door clicked open, and Tony wanted to pinch the bridge of his nose at the sheer level of fail in the security measures in this place. The door was secure enough, but the code... well. Wasn't. This guy didn't have much creativity.

Opening the door put him in a dimly lit corridor, with bare concrete walls and floor. Tony eyed his suit's temperature gauges and winced. Without insulation, this place simply couldn't get much warmer than the air outside. Maybe the asshat who'd taken Steve had an insulated bedroom somewhere, but this area was only a few degrees warmer than the winds out on the ice shelf.

The beacon was pinging about halfway down the corridor, too. If he was really out here, Steve had to be all but frozen, at this rate. Tony winced and headed for the door nearest the beacon. It one had another keypad, and this time the keys weren't worn enough for Tony to immediately guess the code. He tried the same as had worked on the outer door, and came up empty handed.

Clearly it was time to use force. He didn't feel like wasting the time breaking in quietly, at this point. Lifting his arm, Tony charged his repulsor, and simply blasted the lock to slag. It was liable to set off an alarm somewhere, but Tony couldn't give less of a flying fuck about that at the moment.

Shouldering open the door, Tony watched the sliver of light from the hallway light up the room until it fell on a very familiar uniform.

"Fuck! Steve!"

Steve was lying on what looked like a table, manacles secured around his wrists and connected to the sides of the table with simple chains. He didn't react to Tony's alarmed exclamation, either, worryingly. 

"Come on, Steve, answer me," Tony tried again, hurrying over to his lover's side and started hurriedly checking him over. Steve's body temperature was way too low for comfort, and there were what looked like a mixture of frost and ice crystals covering his uniform and in his hair. Had Steve been dunked in water, too? Fuck. "Fucking hell, if this asshole managed to knock you out or give you more nightmares, I'll throw him outside without his parka."

"Don't do that," Natasha's calm voice came across the comm, even though he hadn't opened the line. JARVIS must have. "Coulson will make sure you get extra paperwork. Keep your cool and find a way to warm him up, we're on our way."

Perceptive as always. Tony took a deep breath and held it for a few seconds, trying to loosen a little of the tension threatening to make his trigger finger oh so very twitchy.

Taking another glance around the room, Tony spotted a first aid kit that looked like it hadn't been gutted. Probably kept there so that Parka Man could patch himself up, rather than his guests. He took the three steps over to it, and picked it up, rummaging through it in the low light until a glint of silver caught his eye. Thank fuck, there was a space blanket in it. Hurriedly, Tony shook out the foil as delicately as the armour would allow and tossed it over Steve. He didn't want to strip off the armour out here, for a number of reasons, not the least of which was the reappearance of Parka Man, who'd been surprisingly absent.

But on the other hand, if Steve didn't have enough body heat left to warm himself back up, Tony knew he might have to lose the armour anyway in favour of joining Steve under that blanket. It would be more effective than the de-icing systems he'd installed in the armour, but he could use those for the time being. It would be awkward as hell to get close enough to Steve for the warmth from the armour to have any effect, but Tony was sure as hell going to try.

After some fumbling, thanks to the restraints attached to Steve's wrists -- which he ripped out of their moorings and then ignored, he managed to get Steve into a position that would work, with Steve seated between Tony's legs and leaning against the chestplate of the armour.

Thankfully, the temperature sensors of the armour picked up a gradual rise in Steve's body temperature, and Tony breathed a sigh of relief. This was far from perfect, but now, at least, he could take advantage of the quiet to check in with Clint and Natasha properly.

By the time he was satisfied that they were well on their way and would be arriving within the hour, some ten minutes had passed, and Steve had lost some of the cold-induced stiffness to his muscles. His breath was leaving tiny puffs of condensation in the air again, which was probably a good sign. 

The position they were in would leave them a bit more vulnerable if Parka Man unexpectedly returned, since the damage to the room's door was pretty obvious, but so be it.

The room was dark without the light from the corridor seeping in, though, so Tony charged up his palm repulsors again, and canvassed the room for a light switch, hoping there would be one within reach. There wasn't. Somewhat predictably it was near the door of the room, and out of reach. There was no way he was moving now, either. The room they were in, now that he took a closer look, looked like a store-room, and probably wasn't as well insulated as the living quarters.

Resigning himself to keeping watch in semi-darkness, Tony sighed, dimmed his repulsors again, and settled himself reasonably comfortably against the wall next to Steve's 'bed'. Rather than get Steve loose and go haring out into the night with its 55 degrees of frost, Tony had decided he would stay put in the conveniently available shelter of Parka Man's base. It would be easier for the others to find, and eliminated the need for him to attempt to build a shelter of his own before Steve froze, or transport Steve to one of the permanent research stations. On the other hand, temperatures inside Parka Man's lair were much higher, clocking in at a positively balmy 2 degrees below zero.

Instead of trying to get out, he kept a close eye on Steve's body temperature and the base entrance, vis-a-vis JARVIS and the Stark Industries satellites he had access to. The dot on his HUD representing the quinjet crawled closer, seeming to make no progress at all, even though he knew quite well that the jet was traveling as fast as Clint could make it.

As Steve slowly recovered, Tony felt his own worried tension decrease in tiny increments, each uptick in Steve's health corresponding to a slight unwinding in the muscles in Tony's shoulders. Of course, as he relaxed, Tony stated to feel the cold and his own weariness. He'd been awake for almost thirty hours when he'd gotten the news that Steve had been taken, and the four hour nap he'd gotten in-flight wasn't enough to counteract that, as well as the skipped meals and the cold.

Shifting his weight to keep his joints from locking in the cold, Tony felt his muscles creak and winced. After they got home, he was going to haul Steve into the hottest shower either of them could stand and stay there until he'd forgotten he was ever cold.

The sound of a door opening and closing at the end of the corridor distracted him from his thoughts. "Sir," JARVIS spoke up, "I believe your opponent has arrived."

Tony scowled. He was going to give this guy a piece of his mind. Bracing for a fight, he mentally prepared himself. Parka Man wasn't going to get away with this.

Footsteps echoed down the hall, the gait staccato in a way he associated with Pepper's heels, and he paused before he powered up his weapons fully. That hesitation probably saved her life. The door burst open, and someone rushed in. She spotted Tony immediately, dropped the bundle she was carrying, and started yelling at him.

"Oh my god! Get away from him! What the hell do you think you're doing!"

Tony, now totally confused, instinctively held up his arms to shield his head when she snatched up what looked like a handbag and flew at him with it, fierce in her apparent defense of Steve.

"Whoa! Hey, lady," Tony tried, "quit that!"

"I swear!" She yelled, not appeased in the least, "as if it wasn't enough that Fred brought home a superhero and asked me to find the supplies to warm him up somehow," he paused to beat at Tony a few more times, "now I've got fucking Iron Man in one of my storerooms lurking like he's trying for a goddamn," another few swings, "ambush!"

With one last swing that broke through his guard to smash against his helmet with surprising force and tore one of the straps out of the bag, Tony grabbed for her hands, remembering to keep the strength of his gauntlets in check. His ears were actually ringing with the force of that last blow, and he shook his head in an attempt to clear it.

"Calm the fuck down, would you," he yelled at her. "I'm not here to ambush you."

She glared at him, clearly disbelieving, and growled. "Unhand me. Now!"

"I will," Tony riposted, "if you stop trying to hit me and maybe fuck the hell off."

Giving Tony another longer glare, she slowly relaxed and nodded. "Fine, but you're telling me what the hell you're doing here."

With perfect timing, that was the moment Steve picked to regain consciousness. He sat up straight with a shout and stared unseeing into the distance, muttering indistinguishable nonsense under his breath and sending the space blanket fluttering down to sit in a pile over his knees.

The woman forgotten, Tony scrambled to gather Steve up in his arms, trying to get his lover to respond to his presence properly. "Steve! Hey, Steve, you're fine. We're gonna get you home soon."

Steve didn't respond, fighting the arms around him instead, and seeming to get more distressed with each passing moment.

"For fuck's sake," the lady said, "give him something to focus on. He needs a reference point."

It was a risky move, with the way she'd been beating him up a moment ago, but Tony didn't have any better options. He extricated himself hastily, stood and took off his helmet, wincing at the chill of the room, then pulled one of Steve's hands to his face. "Steve," he tried again when Steve flinched as though he'd been burned at the touch, "hey, buddy, it's me."

Steve pulled his hand free and brought it to his own face for a moment, the chains dangling from his arm seeming to ring in the silence of the room. After a beat he dropped it to the table and brought his other hand up, reaching out for the armour as though he didn't believe it was really there. "Tony?" 

"Yeah, Steve," he said, no longer able to resist the urge to get his hands on his lover, and took a handful of Steve's uniform in his left hand. He needed that much to keep himself stable, at this point, and Steve definitely didn't mind. He reached out with his own left hand and gripped tightly at the armour's yoke, above Tony's right collarbone.

* * *

* * *

Steve's eyes cleared for a moment, fixed on Tony's, then closed again on a sigh.

"Steve!"

"Jesus," the lady interjected, "touching as this is, you need to quit freaking out. Get him back under that blanket."

Pivoting on the balls of his feet with a harsh screech of armour on concrete, Tony advanced on her. "And why should I listen to you? Why, exactly, should I trust a word you say when my friend and teammate was chained to a table in sub-freezing temperatures, wet and disoriented? When he was drugged and kidnapped away from his home in New York and carried off to fucking Antartica?"

To her credit, she only took a single step back before her chin came back up and she stood her ground. "He was only restrained because he wouldn't stop thrashing and we didn't want him hurting himself. Wet we couldn't do much about; he wouldn't fit in my things and Fred's were also out. Disoriented we couldn't fix, either, without something dry to put him in that would fit him and possibly a medic. This is only a tiny satellite camp, and we don't have much in the way of facilities or spare supplies."

He couldn't say too much about any of that, and, partially mollified, Tony relented a little. Now that he thought about it, her claim that this was a camp made much more sense than thinking of it as a lair. It didn't have any of the attributes he usually ascribed to a villain's hideout. Even the Ten Rings had had more infrastructure, ironic as that was. Steve distracted him by making a low plaintive sound and groping around for something. When Tony turned to look at him, the whine of the servos in the armour must have cued Steve in, and he reached out in that direction, his eyes still closed.

Stepping in close to Steve, he glared at her. "Still not convinced I believe you, but for now I'll give you the benefit of the doubt," he told her bluntly as he put the armour in Steve's reach. Steve immediately wrapped a hand around Tony's armoured forearm, heedless of the chill of the metal, and quieted, apparently reassured by Tony's presence. "Now get the fuck out of here."

With a derisive snort, she nodded and shoved a self-heating MRE into Tony's free hand. "Here. I couldn't scrounge up much, but I found some soup. If he needs real medical attention we can get him to the main camp somehow."

Without his HUD, he couldn't tell what Steve's vitals were doing, but he seemed to be stable for the moment, so Tony went along with things for the moment. He took the MRE but didn't open it, secure in the knowledge that Clint and Nat would be showing up soon, on the off chance that he needed the reinforcements.

Unsure what to think but pissed the fuck off, Tony watched her retreat and close the door behind her. Without access to his comms without his helmet, Tony tried not to lose himself to thoughts snarled themselves into a Gordian knot and circled constantly back to the knowledge that Steve would be okay and they were, if not among friends, at least not behind enemy lines.

He arranged himself behind Steve again, with his lover more or less in his lap this time, and pulled the space blanket back up around them both, tucking it between Steve's shoulderblades and the chestpiece of the armour. Satisfied they were as comfortable as they were going to get, out here, Tony settled in to wait for Clint and Natasha to show up.

A minute or so later, Steve broke the silence, finally fully conscious and confused as hell. "Tony," he asked, voice hoarse, "what happened? Where are we?"

Pulling Steve close, and pleased that Steve's arms went around his where they were wrapped around Steve's waist, Tony tucked his nose behind Steve's ear. "Well," he replied, "some asshole drugged and kidnapped you then almost gave you hypothermia. Which means I have to keep you right where you are until Clint and Nat get here with the jet."

Steve was silent for a while, processing that. "And the guy that took me," he queried, "is the one that was threatening those schoolkids?"

"Near as I can tell, yeah," Tony said on a sigh. "Pretty sure he won't do it again, though."

"In that case, I can live with the outcome, though I'd have preferred it not involve," Steve made a face, "this kind of scenery."

Tony snorted. "No shit. You don't have to look, though. Once we're on the jet, you and me can stake out a bunk at the back and stay there."

Steve huffed. "With or without the suit?"

With a smirk, Tony joked, "showing your kinks, Steve? I didn't think you liked the armour that much, but I'm sure I could arrange something."

"Smart alec," Steve growled at him not quite hiding the words under his breath. 

Another silence fell, but this one was more comfortable, and lasted until Tony estimated the others ought to have arrived with the jet. He reluctantly peeled himself away from Steve, and reached for his helmet, to put it on. "Hey, J, I'm back on comms," he said, and got an immediate response. 

"Thank fuck, I was beginning to doubt we'd be able to raise you," Clint groused. "I can't set the jet down, with the weather conditions what they are. The wind shear's too strong. Think you can fly the Cap up into the cargo bay? The compartment doors should keep the worst of the cold out of the jet's cabin."

Tony turned to Steve. "Cap?"

Steve shivered visibly at the thought, and swallowed hard, his eyes falling shut for a moment. "I'll be fine. Let's do it."

Tony acknowledged the statement with a nod, then spoke to Clint. "We're on our way. Hold position if you can."

"Copy." Natasha was the one to answer, this time. "Let's go home. The weather here is foul."

Tony eyed Steve for a moment. "Take that space blanket with you, you can use it as a layer of insulation while you're outside, since you don't have a parka." Opening the door of the room, Tony led the way out of the tiny underground camp, not feeling the slightest shred of guilt over the damage he'd done to the lock. 

Steve eyed it as they left, but said nothing. Tony was just fine with that; he'd happily tell the whole story, but he wanted to do it later. When they reached the outermost anteroom, Tony carefully bundled Steve into the space blanket, ignoring Steve's silent shivering, and picked him up in a princess carry.

"My hero," Steve quipped, only half sarcastically.

"You can show your appreciation later, Princess."

JARVIS opened the outer doors for them, and Tony immediately threw them up into the howling winds with a blast of his repulsors. He didn't stay long enough to check whether JARVIS had closed the doors. Let the inhabitants worry about that. They had several intermediate doors to buffer the warmth, whereas Steve had nothing but a thin layer of foil to keep him warm. 

Tony had to approach cautiously; the winds had picked up the loose snow and particulate ice on the ground and turned it into a near blizzard. Visibility was very low, and the jet only came into view when they were a few meters away from it. Seconds later they were aboard the jet and Tony reached out to hit the switch to close the bay doors were behind them. He could feel the shift in the jet's attitude as Clint maneuvered them up higher in an attempt to get back out of the storm, and started them on the long flight back to New York.

"Good to have you guys back on board," Clint called over the jet's intercom as Tony set Steve on his feet again and moved towards the doors on the other side of the cargo bay. "Coulson's handling the legal shit and the paperwork for that, so you can expect to hear from him soon. We'll be making a stopover in Buenos Aires to refuel and get some sleep, before we continue home," he informed them, "and to get you both checked out by a medic, since we didn't have time to grab one on the way here."

Steve looked mulish; he disliked medics almost as much as Tony. A byproduct of having been so sickly as a kid and then prodded at repeatedly after Erskine had managed to transform him. And then again after he'd been defrosted alive. Tony decided to head the issue off at the pass. "Come on, Steve," he put in as the door connecting to the cabin opened and they stepped through hastily so they could seal it again, "help me out of the armour so we can lie down."

Sure, the only bunks on the jet were for transporting wounded, but Tony gave no fucks at the moment. He wanted to lie down, and have Steve there in his arms. And something told him that Steve could also use the reassurance.

Something like five minutes later they were settled, and Steve was out like a light. Five minutes after that, so was Tony.


End file.
